Trapped with a learning disability, she couldn't begin formal education until she was 14. She is now an executive vice president of one of the fastest-growing high-tech companies in Central Florida.

Warm, extroverted, articulate, the 36-year-old Casselberry resident exudes a mixture of self-confidence and humility that can provoke, amuse, entertain and challenge those around her.

''People like working with her because she is so nice,'' said Scott Packert, an accountant at the Orlando office of Coopers & Lybrand who does work for Youngblood's company. ''But she's definitely not someone you'll run over. She knows her stuff and she lets you know her mind. She has a lot of business savvy.''

Youngblood and her business partners in the former SKC Inc., a Casselberry financial-software company, showed their savvy last year when they engineered a buyout of their company by CCN Systems Ltd., a giant high-tech company based in Nottingham, England.

The British bought SKC in November for an undisclosed sum, renamed the company CCN Management Systems Inc., and charted plans for a major expansion that has already begun. CCN Systems is a subsidiary of The Great Universal Stores Ltd., a multibillion-dollar retail conglomerate.

Dan Stavros, Youngblood's husband and president of CCN Management, said she played a major role in getting the business started in 1988.

''She did most of the groundwork for it, learning to do the bookkeeping, finding lawyers and accountants for us, doing all the nitty-gritty stuff,'' Stavros said. ''The most impressive thing about D.J. is her constant drive to get things done, whether it is work or at home. She is a relentless worker.''

Her primary responsibility for the company now is to develop domestic and international marketing strategies for CCN Management's line of financial-transaction software products.

Stories of Youngblood are almost legendary among her friends. There was the time, for example, when she went unannounced to see a politician who would not return her phone calls. She sat in his office six hours until he agreed to meet with her. On another occasion, at a seminar in New York, she got into a conversation with the chief executive officer of J.C. Penney Co. and tried to make a sale.

''She has an ability to walk up to anybody and start a conversation,'' Stavros said.

Sometimes that can have humorous results. Once, while on a trip to Venezuela, Youngblood tried to compliment a man on the shirt he was wearing, using what Spanish she knew. She found out later that she actually said something about the girth of the man's posterior.

Youngblood's aggressiveness is an asset in her career. She makes no secret that the CCN deal is a highlight.

''The (parent) company is a $4.7 billion outfit, so they're no 'hojos' that we're talking about there,'' she said. ''To be acquired by them in our first year of existence is simply amazing. It is a real Cinderella story.''

Like her company, Youngblood also wears the glass slipper.

She has emerged from a past of pain and adversity to become a successful businesswoman and community leader.

The transformation, however, was not overnight.

Youngblood, who was born in Coral Gables, was traumatized at age 3 in a family car accident. She developed a severe speech impediment.

Depressed by her problem, she lost self-esteem, began to eat compulsively and bloated to almost 200 pounds as a teen-ager.

Frustrated by their daughter's disability, her Catholic parents turned to the nuns of a North Miami convent school for help.

At the school, Sister Ann Bernadette took Youngblood under her wing. Long sessions of teaching and encouragement from Bernadette brought Youngblood out of her isolation and gave her a reason to believe in herself.

Youngblood finished high school at 18 and spent part of the next four years working with the poor in a Catholic mission in Venezuela. At one point, she considered becoming a nun.

''I decided it was not for me,'' she said. ''I decided that I could really make a contribution to the outside world, and I needed to make that move.''

Her friends say Youngblood's sometimes outrageous personality would have been out of place.

''I could never have pictured her as a nun,'' said Carol Oldham, a longtime friend who lives in Miami. ''Have you ever met a gabby nun? Now really. She has always had the gift of gab. I don't think she would have lasted very long if she had become one.''

In 1976, at age 23, Youngblood rented an apartment in North Miami and landed her first job, as a meter reader and bill collector for Florida Power & Light Co.